U.S. Netted Nearly $20 Billion From Two Crypto Cases, Chinese Government Report Claims
A Chinese state-linked cybersecurity agency says American law enforcement has seized over $30 billion in cryptocurrency since 2022, with almost two-thirds attributed to just two prosecutions.
BEIJING / WASHINGTON, March 2, 2026. China's National Computer Virus Emergency Response Center (CVERC) alleged in a February 2026 report that the United States government seized more than $30 billion in global cryptocurrency assets between 2022 and 2025, with nearly $20 billion attributed to enforcement actions against two individuals: Prince Holding Group chairman Chen Zhi and Binance founder Changpeng Zhao (CZ). The claims, published by the state-linked Global Times, frame American crypto enforcement as a geopolitical wealth extraction strategy, an assertion Western analysts have largely dismissed as propaganda. The individual case figures the report cites are drawn from public U.S. court records, even if the $30 billion aggregate total reflects Beijing's own accounting rather than a figure established by U.S. filings.
The Two Cases Behind the Numbers
The larger of the two cases centers on Chen Zhi, chairman of Prince Holding Group, a Cambodian-based conglomerate that U.S. prosecutors say ran a network of forced-labor "pig butchering" scam compounds across Cambodia, Myanmar, and Laos, part of an operation that spanned more than 30 countries and reached victim pools across South Asia, Africa, and beyond. Pig butchering refers to a fraud scheme in which victims (typically approached through fake romance apps or social media) are slowly groomed before being persuaded to invest in fraudulent cryptocurrency platforms. At its peak, Prince Group's operation reportedly generated an estimated $30 million per day.
In October 2025, the U.S. Department of Justice unsealed what Attorney General Pam Bondi called "the largest forfeiture action in the history of the Department of Justice": a civil complaint seeking approximately 127,000 Bitcoin, valued at roughly $15 billion at the time of filing. That civil forfeiture complaint was accompanied by a separate criminal indictment filed in the Eastern District of New York, as well as Treasury Department sanctions designating Prince Group as a transnational criminal organization. Chen Zhi reportedly remains a fugitive, though some reports suggest he was apprehended and extradited to China in early 2026.
The second case is the 2023 Binance settlement, already a matter of public record. In November of that year, Binance (then the world's largest cryptocurrency exchange) pleaded guilty to federal charges including willful failure to implement anti-money laundering (AML) programs and facilitating transactions with sanctioned jurisdictions including Iran and North Korea. The total resolution came to $4.316 billion in combined criminal penalties and forfeitures across the DOJ, FinCEN, OFAC, and CFTC. CZ personally pleaded guilty to a single AML violation, paid a $50 million fine to the DOJ and an additional $150 million to the CFTC, and served a four-month prison sentence beginning in April 2024, a term widely criticized as lenient given the DOJ had sought three years.
China's Framing: "Harvesting," Not Justice
The CVERC report goes further than cataloguing seizure figures. It alleges that the Bitcoin at the center of the Chen Zhi case was not the product of legitimate law enforcement at all, but rather the result of a state-level cyberattack: specifically, a December 2020 hack of the LuBian mining pool in which 127,272 BTC was stolen. Under this theory, the U.S. repackaged stolen funds as a lawful forfeiture action years later.
The Register, which reviewed the report, described its claims as "conspiracies." No corroborating evidence has emerged to support the hacking allegation.
The broader political argument is more pointed. CVERC contends the U.S. is systematically converting seized crypto into national financial reserves, a claim that lands with some context: President Trump signed an executive order in early 2025 establishing a U.S. Bitcoin Strategic Reserve, directing the government to hold rather than liquidate Bitcoin obtained through forfeitures.
The report characterizes U.S. enforcement as employing "cyberattacks, rule-based containment, feigned retreats, targeted and long-range harvesting," and describes what it terms a "systematic and precise harvest" of global virtual currency assets. "The US directly convert the involved virtual currency assets into strategic financial reserves under its own control," the CVERC report stated, as cited by the Global Times.
Who Gets Left Behind: The Victim Restitution Gap
Whatever the geopolitical framing, a critical gap runs through both cases. Victims have seen almost none of the money.
Pig butchering scams grew 40% year-over-year in 2024, per Chainalysis, with losses from Southeast Asia-based operations exceeding $10 billion globally. The United Nations estimates more than 200,000 people are currently held against their will in Southeast Asian scam compounds, including trafficked workers from Africa and Southeast Asia forced to run the very schemes that defrauded victims around the world. Despite $15 billion seized in the Chen Zhi case, no formal victim compensation mechanism had been announced as of this writing.
India ranks among the largest markets globally by volume of pig butchering victims, with South Asian diaspora communities in the United States, United Kingdom, and Australia disproportionately targeted through fake romance and investment apps. Prince Group's reach across more than 30 countries almost certainly included South Asian victim pools, yet the CVERC report's framing of U.S. enforcement as "harvesting" has no bearing on whether those victims will ever see restitution.
The downstream effects of the Binance settlement have been felt acutely in emerging markets. In South Africa, Binance introduced mandatory Travel Rule compliance for all transfers in April 2025. In Uganda, Morocco, and Jordan (countries where crypto adoption has grown sharply as a hedge against currency devaluation), Binance suspended services entirely following FATF grey-listing of those jurisdictions in 2024 and the exchange's own heightened post-settlement compliance posture. For users who relied on the platform for remittances or savings, those disruptions were immediate and practical.
What Comes Next
The CVERC report is the second Chinese government publication in four months framing U.S. crypto enforcement as technological hegemony; the first, in November 2025, accused American agencies of hacking cryptocurrency exchanges. Both follow a consistent pattern of countering U.S. financial sanctions narratives ahead of anticipated economic friction between the two countries.
For exchanges, developers, and retail users operating in South Asia, Africa, or anywhere within reach of U.S. jurisdiction, the enforcement environment sends a less ambiguous signal: the post-Binance era of regulatory tolerance for AML gaps is over. Developers and custody providers should note that the 127,000 Bitcoin at the center of the Chen Zhi case was seized via civil forfeiture complaint (not a criminal conviction), a mechanism that carries distinct implications for wallet custody and the limits of on-chain privacy in jurisdictions where U.S. legal reach applies. With the DOJ's Scam Center Strike Force having seized over $400 million since its launch in November 2025, and a Bitcoin Strategic Reserve now enshrined in executive policy, the convergence of crypto enforcement and geopolitics is unlikely to slow, regardless of how Beijing chooses to characterize it.
Sources: U.S. Department of Justice; CFTC; FinCEN; OFAC; Global Times / CVERC; The Register; Chainalysis; TRM Labs; Elliptic; CoinDesk; CoinTelegraph; CNBC; East Asia Forum.